


An immortal and a time-traveller walked into a bar yesterday.

by scotif



Category: How to Train Your Dragon (Movies), Original Work
Genre: F/F, HTTYD - Freeform, Immortal, LilSad, M/M, NothingTooTerribleHappensIPromise, Odd, One Piece SciFi and Fantasy, One Shot, Short, SoWierd, Time-traveller, shortstory, verycute
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-01
Updated: 2021-03-01
Packaged: 2021-03-13 18:07:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29780058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scotif/pseuds/scotif
Summary: A wierd lil' story I devised based of an immortal and time-traveller prompt I can't remember from where. A lil bit sad and a lil bit mad. All original characters, ish. Spot the httyd quote, and the immortal is very loosely based of Astrid, my absolute queen. Dedicated to the She's They's and Gay's x
Comments: 2
Kudos: 2





	An immortal and a time-traveller walked into a bar yesterday.

**Author's Note:**

> Cheers for reading this beautiful - hope you like. It's an odd lil thing, written in a mad 1 am rush. I think reading it twice is normal.

Margaret says I was born on the 12th of May 2002, but honestly I do not remember, being an infant at the time. She has been by my side ever since. What I will say is a couple of seconds before my birth, the British Weather tossed a coin on whether to kill me 30 years before my 'time'. Of course, this coin toss resulted in rain.

It splashed in through the open window, and the slowly sodden-growing sill was left unnoticed as medical professionals rushed through busy corridors.

About 500000000000 kilometers above the brewing clouds, in a slowly spinning turquoise cube, sat a hipster in his 20's - high on life (should law enforcement ask). His mother-in-law had just placed a 'Live, Love, Laugh.' magnet on his husband's fridge, and whilst chortling about it in his completely non inebriated state he pushed a button, which had been aimed at a sparrow he was watching, sat outside the Royal Bath Hospital, North-east Somerset. Science occurred, which would have rendered that sparrow a time traveller, had a worm not just appeared from the muddy ground.

Two minutes later, I was born. I know this much because I was born with Margaret, who told me when I was old enough to read. I was not there for my birth to see it, for obvious reasons perhaps not yet clear to you yet. Whilst I click though the pages of my memoirs I am becoming increasingly aware that time, as always, is rather against us here. About 6 years later I have my first memories, and they are not interesting, so we will skip those. 

I first saw Sally on December 15th, 1922. She was wearing a black denim jacket, more patch than actual denim, faded jeans and turquoise leather boots. I immediately thought this odd. 

It turns out Sally had met me on a particularly humid and sticky night outside a particularly shit club in Liverpool, after I'd had three glasses of rosé and two double vodka and cokes. I cannot brag about my alcohol tolerance, and it's safe to say I don't remember us meeting. I do, however, remember waking the next morning underneath the canopy of a four poster bed in Calais, the denim jacket, much crisper and with less patches, covering my naked arse, as it was mine at the time. Golden light gushed through purple net curtains, seemingly creating beams of calm energy suspended by nothing but hope. 

Sally looked beautiful. 

And from there, circa 1507, and before then, and for long afterward, we were inseparable.

I had met Sally by pure chance. Of course I was with her at the time, engaged in fact, but it was a pure accident, me meeting her on that cobbled street in Birmingham, December 15th, 1922. I was at a mates funeral at the time, and we and a couple of other lads were set to get drinks after, and I'd promised to tell him what his funeral was going to be like. I had stepped outside for a few moments, pack of cigarettes in hand, when I spotted her leaving the theatre. Normally I was more careful. Safe to say that I neglected Margaret back then - oh, the arrogance of youth - and when wanting to go see some beautiful choral music from a touring Italian company hadn't checked that I was going to be there. 

Margaret is not organised, bless her. Hence the name. In my mind, she is a 80 year old woman, just back from the hairdresser's with a new, extremely vivid, colour in place, light pink nails and a yellow cardigan. She's already lost her glasses, which are balanced precariously on the edge of the setee, has absolutely lost her marbles, and can't find the power button for the TV. What's more, she's about to miss Pointless.

Some points are seemingly well documented. As I said, she has my birthday down to a T, but misses those first six years of my life completely. She is very specific about a whole manner of utterly useless pieces of info, including extended information about the minimum wage of a denim jacket factory aka sweatshop just outside of South America. On a completely unrelated topic, Margret is why I only buy second hand now.

However, later pages are written erratically, and I cannot make out the handwriting. I call this section Margret's golden years; where the marbles started really running away. And the dates don't particularly make sense, so I normally just ignore her. I can search by year (after I had installed the latest firmware from Venus™ publishing) and if one of those squiggly, completely not legible years appears then I avoid it like the plague. Do not want to get stuck in a loop.

Basically if I see myself, I will become that past self. Those are the rules, and I didn't make them. Some lass called Michelle, on her first day working at the Vortex Guild on A56-STF (just outside Havalgos if you haven't heard from it) did by accident. I don't like Michelle, but we are Facebook friends. 

Luckily for me, Sally knows time travel law. Whilst I was emptying my bladder after sitting through my least favourite rendition of Handel's Messiah to date, she dealt with the issue at hand. Thus I avoided ending up in an eternal loop consisting of only 20 miserable years. Thank fuck for my future wife. 

I stared at who-I-didn't-yet-know-was-Sally for 10 seconds. She looked up, flipped me off, and went back inside to warn me. Which she did. By flipping me off.

Me and Sally went places. All over really. Absolutely mad times which I can't even begin to describe. You will just have to imagine. 

And the sex. Well.

No, don't imagine that.

Years went by. With Sally being immortal and all (it wasn't pertinent to the story until now, okay), she showed me all the incredible places she'd seen in those first couple of thousands of years. I met Boudicca - what a woman. Another accident, of course. I don't like to meddle with history. But an incredibly happy (if not slightly frightening) one at that. We toured the pyramids, whilst they were being built. We got absolutely plastered in an underground casino during the Prohibition. I lost so much money that day.

We spent years together. An extremely short time in the grand scheme of things. Two extremely small dots considering the vastness of the universe. A universe that she would spend forever in, looking like every other 30 year old woman, and no younger than 25 on a good day. 

And as my years ticked on, her weariness grew.

It started as a small seed of discontent. Minute, really. A black speck silhouetted by a moonbeam reflected in her iris. So tiny.

But it grew. I turned 60. Our mansion in 12th century France wasn't enough for her, so we relocated to 15th century Venice. And then that was not enough, so we moved again and again and again... and I couldn't jump as often. 

I was too tired. And she was exhausted. 

She faded away in front of me. 

And all the time in the universe wouldn't have stopped it. 

She was so beautiful. That I must always remember. Her brain held so much wisdom, so much power. She could move mountains, level forests, tame seas. Crush a rock with her skull. Instil the fear of God in someone with only her middle finger. 

A couple of years back, when I still could, I used to jump to places I knew she'd been, or where we both were, in the hopes of seeing her. This became dangerous, for obvious reasons. I chose to retire in the future - a time we hadn't explored as much, because we liked the classics more than robots. The past seems much less dark after you have seen the year 2897.

In hindsight, this was foolish of me. For my plan to now work, I have to live for another week on this beech. It took me 4 months to get to this extremely remote sandy strip in Chile. According to Margaret, I will walk past this tree, aged 15, and I will be on this beach for a total of 5 minutes. I have to be there. If I am not there, the next time I will visit the future is 30 years from now. I don't know if I can last a week.

I have positioned myself in a beach hut, with enough rations for the week, a lot of drugs, some legal, and a scented candle.

Earlier I tore out the index page. That and the rest of the green inked pages are floating away towards that infinite horizon. I pulled the quil from my boot, flattened the inside cover of Margaret, and began to write. New paper filled the empty space, empty and promising, and as the pain became intoxicating I filled those pages too, and I wrote, and wrote and, I write still. Dates and times and places. Trying to make it more coherent then last time, more precise than last time. But I never write people. I want that to be a surprise again.

My parents are dead. Margaret doesn't mention those years, and I now know why. I must have forgotten once, or perhaps never known. Or perhaps I did once. I have surely been here before, surely made the same decision I am now. And I surely will again. 

She is all I had, and all I will ever have. I am too weak. Far too weak. Nothing compared to her. I… can't do this without her. I don't care what that makes me, what kind of evil would make her go through that again. I need her. 

As the moments tick by, and I can hear how shallow each breathe becomes, I keep all of the strength I can muster to last those extra few minutes, knowing if I can do this now, I will always be able to do this. Because I will always make this choice. Not that I know that yet. Not that I will ever know. And boy, will this hurt me again. But I would do anything for that night in Calais, with the liquid light swirling through purple curtains and pouring onto her pillow. I'd happily kill myself infinitly. 

I just need to live.

*~*

Sitting under the shade of a palm tree I gaze at a turquoise and pale blue horizon, which seemingly stretches for miles; stretches, seamlessly throughout time itself, as if that horizontal line is the entryway to infinity.

My parents are dead. 

If you are now concerned that this fact will continuously and ungracefully pop up throughout this text: do not worry. It is said only once more. It will act as the gateway to the end; as a sign post to the beach on which I now sit, writing these events in the few hours before infinity I have left. 

Order is important. I will write this in the neatest way I can, without flashbacks or jumps; no muddling or musing. In chronological order. Now, when to begin.


End file.
